We're No. 1: Lubbock top toxic spiller in West Texas

Hub City's rate of serious spills below state, national averages

A trailer with six tanks holding hydrogen chloride is parked at the Bayer CropScience facility in Lubbock. Hazardous materials experts drained a leaking tank into a recovery tank. The leak a year ago Thursday forced the evacuation of about 200 families.

Flashing emergency lights lit up her street and the late-night air smelled like rotten eggs. Police knocked on her neighbors’ doors trying to wake them as Gonzales heard an officer say over the squad car speaker, “Please evacuate.”

“It was one of those things that if you had no idea what was going on. It was very scary,” said Gonzales, 27.

Gonzales was among the 200 people a year ago today evacuated from the Guadalupe Neighborhood after hydrogen chloride leaked from a cylinder at the Bayer CropScience facility on Erskine Street.

Hydrogen chloride is used at the facility to remove the “fuzzy coating” on cotton seed before it’s treated and packaged for distribution. Inhaling hydrogen chloride can cause coughing, choking and inflammation of the nose, throat and upper respiratory tract. In severe cases, it can be fatal.

“We dodged a bullet on that one,” said Capt. Nick Wilson, a Lubbock Fire Department spokesman. “A lot of things went right that day.”

Not all chemical spills in Lubbock have the drama of a neighborhood evacuation, but without that drama you’d never know how frequently they happen. Lubbock averages a hazardous material spill once a month.

Since the 1970s, Lubbock has had nearly 500 hazardous-material spills, according to reports filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation. That’s more than Midland, Odessa and Big Spring combined.

Only Amarillo, with 569 spills, has had more in the region.

Determining the frequency of hazardous spills is tricky because no one agency has sole regulatory oversight. And, not all spills require reporting.

“There actually are probably more,” Wilson said. “There are small spills that are unreported.”

No one could say with any certainty why Lubbock has had more hazardous spills than any other West Texas community. Contributing factors, though, could be the number of hazardous materials coming into and leaving the city and how frequently these containers are handled.

“A lot of spills are minuscule,” said Joe Delcambre, spokesman for DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which collects the data.

“The handling part normally will have higher incidence. There’s a greater chance when a package is transferred that something happens, than moving it from point A to point B.”

Precursors

The Hub City may have the dubious distinction of having the most spills in West Texas, but only 3 percent were serious. That’s below the state and national figures.

The nation’s top spillers are Ohio, California and Texas. Roughly 3 percent of the hazardous spills in Ohio and California are serious. Five percent are serious in Texas. Nationally, that number is 4 percent.

Across the Lone Star State, Houston has had the most hazardous spills, with more than 7,600 in the past four decades. However, only 2 percent of those spills were considered serious. In Plano, which has had only 19 hazardous spills since 1971, about one in five was serious.

In this region, Big Spring has had the fewest spills with about one a year. But that city had the highest percentage of serious spills that the A-J looked at — 19 percent.

Serious spills include incidents that result in a fatality, the evacuation of 25 people or more, discharging more than 120 gallons or 883 pounds of hazardous material or the release of radioactive material.

The federal government regulates more than 3,000 hazardous materials.

Since 1971, Lubbock has had six reported injuries and no deaths from hazardous material spills in the city. The most common spills involve paint, pesticides and corrosive or flammable liquids.

“Even the smaller spills of paint can be precursors,” said Sean Moulton, director of the Open Government Policy program at the Center for Effective Government.

“You want to take even the smaller accidents seriously because they’re warning signs.”

How spills happen

The majority of Lubbock’s spills — 87 percent of the reported incidents — occurred on roadways. FedEx has been the carrier in roughly a third of Lubbock’s spills since 1990. Scott Fiedler, a FedEx spokesman in Tennessee, declined to comment for this story.

Rail and airway were the next most common modes of transportation.

In the wake of a number of high-profile accidents including a deadly fertilizer plant explosion in West last year and a radiation leak that exposed workers near Carlsbad, New Mexico, earlier this year, the key to avoiding a similar tragedy is maintaining a culture of safety. But that’s increasingly a challenge, experts say.

“We just don’t have the inspectors we used to,” Moulton said.

Even with more inspectors, accidents can happen, officials know.

“The potential for something big is always there,” Wilson said. “It’s scary how much stuff is in and moves through our community every day.

“Other than a tornado in West Texas, one of the second-biggest risks we have is a hazardous material release.”

Rebuilding credibility

The state is reviewing a Bayer CropScience analysis and report on the hydrogen chloride spill that was submitted in January.

The state’s initial report found about 30 pounds of hydrogen chloride was released in 21 hours. Companies are only required to report spills of more than 5,000 pounds to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

In the aftermath of last year’s hydrogen chloride spill and evacuation, Monty Christian, Bayer CropScience vice president of U.S. cotton operations, said the company reimbursed hotel expenses and put on a neighborhood picnic that more than 400 people attended.

The company also has installed a second sensor at the Erskine facility and this spring hosted a three-day training exercise with the Lubbock Fire Department’s hazmat team.

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Thank you for doing some great reporting. I was curious how the frack water spill in Lubbock last year was handled and was it reported to regulators?

Also, if we could have some more reporting on waste water disposal in our area that would be great. And to what degree water is being used and recycled by the oil and gas industry in our community.

Given our dwindling water supply, it might be of some use to report on the amount of water being used by oil and gas in our area. I've noticed some of your reporting on agricultural use, but not for oil and gas.

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Jonathan Swift "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." Groucho Marx

The thing that was so frustrating working this story on chemical spills is that there isn't one repository for data. There a number of state and federal agencies that provide oversight and conduct their own investigations. But no one go-to source. Tracking down who has jurisdiction can be a nightmare.
As to why Lubbock has more spills than others in the region? It could just be that more hazardous stuff is coming and going through the Hub City.

I could not get FedEx, the city's top spiller, to respond. Short of going through each and every report, we may never know.

But Larry Aleksandrich, an engineering consultant for Arctic Glacier, did tell me something interesting today. The industry had problems with release valves in 2008-2009. The Bayer CropScience spill a year ago was the result of a faulty valve. And at least one of the two leaks Arctic has had in the last decade was due to a release valve.
I wonder how many times a faulty valve is to blame?

Hmm…

Anyway, I've reported that discusses the risks and proximity of chemical facilities to Lubbock's kids. It runs in the A-J on Sunday. I hope you'll read it.